What resolution to capture my scanned photos at ?

[Sifaga]

I have just bought a scanner (Canon 8000F) and plan to scan the many photos i have with the idea of using them in slideshows with music.

what res should i use, any websites with info.

should i just capture at the highest res ?

is it better it scan the negative ?

i plan to do some slides as well but mainly just photos, someone said the scan to PDF files is really handy.

[Solarjetman]

Well, you need to know what you are going to be doing with it. For instance, if you are going to print it out, but your printer is only 600dpi, then scanning at anything higher than 600dpi is a waste (unless you plan on enlarging it).

If you are only going to use it on webpages, you should use a very low resolution, maybe 72dpi. That way dial-up users will not sign you up for spam lists

[Sifaga]

OK,

things i may want to do with the photos



Put on website = use 72dpi
email = use ????
print on 600dpi printer = use 600dpi
send to kodak to print normal sized photo = use ??????
enlarge to A4 size photo = use ?????
Archive = use ?????
to be viewed on the PC = use ?????
to be used on a DVD Slideshow = use ?????

can i get some of the gaps filled in

any other cool uses for the scanner

any help much appreciated

[bottle-necked]

I watch the file size more than the DPI when scanning photos. Scan what your system can handle. I find 30mb easy to open and edit. They prints pretty nice at 1:1. Storing 30mb photos on CD isn't too bad.

For email I like 100k. Most of my friends are on dialup. 1024x768 @ 100k makes a nice jpg photo for email.

For slideshows I again use 1024x768 and around 100k or less (JPG). Large files don't read well off a CD and can lag the show. Slow computers trying to read large files also lags the show. I sometimes make 800x600 slideshows for a few of my friends because they have slow computers and 800x600 is the resolution they run on the monitor.

MPEG2 slideshow movies is a different matter. No matter how large the photo is it's going to be 720x480 when you encode the movie. I like HQ photos but for this 30mb is a bit big. I would say about 3-4mb, maybe less. Depends on the photos quality and your computer I guess.

Good luck.

[rallynavvie]

Honestly you're never going to see much of a difference in print quality if you scan at 300dpi. Inkjet printers that say they print up to 600dpi or whatever may be true technically but you'll never notice a difference. Even on our best laser printers I only use 300dpi for scanning, even when the image needs to be enlarged a little (essentially lowering the resolution even more). The only reason I use anything more than 300 is if the image is line art that I'm going to run through Streamline to convert to vector data. I'd also suggest using higher res (600dpi) if you're scanning line art and what to get a good reproduction as pixellation is far more noticeable in very finite lines (thus likely not pictures from a camera).

For all viewing purposes on a monitor you won't notice anything past 72dpi. This is standard screen res. Some OS (like Linux) use 96dpi. If you really want to reduce the file size of the screen res JPEG files mess with its color palette.

Here's what I'd do if you're using Photoshop to scan them:
Scan the image in at 300dpi and save it as a TIFF file using ZIP compression. TIFFs are large but seem to offer better clarity than a JPEG. Than resample the image to 72dpi and save it as a JPEG file at whatever compression you feel is required (higher quality takes more space but at 72dpi it usually isn't huge). Use the TIFF files for printing purposes and the JPEGs for computer use. Keep in mind not everyone is going to be able to open a TIFF file, but if you ever want a picture enlargement done this is a good format to bring into a copy shop. You may also want to save the image scanned at 300dpi in JPEG format at highest quality in addition to the TIFF as photo reproduciton kiosks like Kodak and Sony only recognize JPEG format.

If you are going to enlarge a photo larger than 400% to print then it may not be a bad idea to scan at 400-600dpi just to add some more pixels in for the enlargement. I can scan an 8x10 @300dpi and enlarge it to 24x30 and print on an HP5000 (large format 6-color inkjet) with very good results.

[Sifaga]

great info

thankyou for that

[Sifaga]

I have been busy scanning my photos as TIF files as suggested.

I now have hundreds of TIF files and was wanting a program that will do a batch convert of the folder to a different format (JPG)

pretty much what was said here to do

Than resample the image to 72dpi and save it as a JPEG file at whatever compression you feel is required (higher quality takes more space but at 72dpi it usually isn't huge).

[eas]

Just a general comment:

Its usually easy to downsample for a specific use than rescan, so if you have the room (and disk space is pretty freaking cheap these days), I'd lean towards larger filesizes, and, of course, I'd avoid storing in a lossy format, like JPEG. If you are storing in JPEG, use a high quality setting.

[freestyler]

What's your impression of that scanner so far Sifaga? I've been looking at that one myself

[Sifaga]

Its been working fine for me so far, its my first scanner so i cant compare the scan speed or features to anything.

didnt have any problems installing.

i decided on this model becuase i wanted to scan some negatives and slides but i havnt had a chance to test this out yet.

i scan 3 photos at a time which is better than 1 at a time, did 6 smaller photos at a time as well.

Im following the suggestion i got above to scan to TIF files and then resize and create JPG for PC use.

I am just trying to find a program that will read the TIF and create smaller JPG's

I figure Photoshop could probably do it under a Auto Batch mode but if theres some little prog that could do it , it would save me going through the PS help files.

[Greg12]

send to kodak to print normal sized photo = use ??????

Use 300DPI.

[jeex]

use the highest optical resolution your scanner will allow.

[rallynavvie]

use the highest optical resolution your scanner will allow.

No, that's wasted space unless you're blowing the pictures up to monstrous proportions. How many DPI do you think the human eye can actually see?

[stiltman]

You may also want to save the image scanned at 300dpi in JPEG format at highest quality in addition to the TIFF as photo reproduciton kiosks like Kodak and Sony only recognize JPEG format.

Actually, the Kodak kiosks at walgreens will recognize TIFF, JPG, JEPG, PSD

Watch your file sizes though. I had a scanned TIFF @ 1600 and the file size was 350mb, and it took the kiosk about 5 minutes to open. Then it tried to open the rest of the files and crashed the kiosk

[jeex]

use the highest optical resolution your scanner will allow.

No, that's wasted space unless you're blowing the pictures up to monstrous proportions. How many DPI do you think the human eye can actually see?

my suggestion was made for printing purposes only..

i like to create the best possible picture, and even if the difference is 1% better image quality, its worth it.

if i'm scanning things like this that i want to keep, i burn them on to cd-r and tuck them away..
if its a one time print, scan & delete.

[kisrum]

Sorry to top an old post but seemed better than starting a new one. I'm preparing to scan literally hundreds of my Dad's black and white photos, mostly 3 1/2 x 3 1/2", probably from an old Brownie. He had them already attached to 8 1/2 x 11 black background paper, 6 per page, so I'll probably scan them that way too, and then separate them into individual pictures later.

If jpg is a "lossy" format, then would .tif be better for long-term archiving? As someone points out above, storage disks are cheap, but I've never seen much difference between 300 dpi and 600 dpi, and 1200 seems like a waste. I guess my only reason to scan at high res in a less lossy format would be in case some fabulous new format comes along later.

I'm happy to convert them to .jpg and lower res when distributing to family members. Not that concerned about printing.

Yes, I'll have compressed air and a clean scanner glass when I get going.

Thanks for your advice.

[stiltman]

I scan foto archives at 1200 and save them mostly as PSDs. Then If I make any modifications to them, I'll save it as a tif for pictures or jpg for email or web

[rallynavvie]

TIFF and PSD are the best options for archival. However 300dpi is plenty for the photo if it is to be reprinted at current size. 600dpi is the better option as it'll allow you a little more flexibility on enlargements later with decent quality. IMO anything higher is just absurd considering the exponential nature of resolutions and file size, not to mention that it some point past 600dpi you're going to exceed the quality of the original print itself. However those resolutions (such as 1200dpi) are reserved for scanning negatives and slides as the media those reside on may actually be able to utilize those resolutions.

I'm not a photographer but I do plenty of scanning and oversize color output via digital means so I've really only got practical experience, no formal training on this.

[madvideos]

I bought an HP with negative reader, I was wanting something good for a wedding DVD project I am working on, my lexmark was not cutting it, so I got this one, I knew the images were going to be shown on a tv, I don't care about the specifics of the exact way a picture should be exported, rather.. how will it look to me.. read on...
so I played with the scanner, dpi this, tiff that... the negative scanner part is terrible btw.. scans are excellent, I scanned out 10 year old wedding pictures in at 300 some 600 DPI, these looked great.. Photoshop choked.. your gonna need a seriously fast computer for this one, I mean 3 ghz or higher.. lol, but most I scanned at 300, perfect, I compared 300 to 600, other than size they were exact.
So.. how did they look on TV? So far it hits the spot!!!

Now I did save all of my pictures as PSD and JPG.
One for the net and one for importing into Premiere, the PSD file looks best.
So there ya have it, I pretty much just said the same as everyone else..lol

[madvideos]

I will give you a hint, if you are working with 600 DPI images in Photoshop.. save often.

[kisrum]

Thanks everyone. I'll fiddle with some test runs to see how slow I can stand it to be and how many disks I want to store.

madvideos, I agree about Photoshop (Elements in my case), its the only app I have that causes my p4 2.4 Ghz 512 RAM to pause and think about things for a while. Love it, though.

[pfh]

For email use the windows photo wizard and choose the email option- it'll downsize 'em for easy emailing while leaving the original intact.

[rallynavvie]

Those sort of problems with Photoshop are more attributed to memory and the speed of your scratch disk. All the Adobe products (and most professional products in general) use hard drives as temporary storage for undo data and the like. The processor is really only being used when you run filters, resize, or any of that. At home my primary scratch disk for both of my workstations is two 18GB 15k SCSI drives in RAID 0. I can tolerate the loss of the array since I never store anything on them for any length of time but damn if doesn't improve the performance of any application that requires scratch disk space

[normcar]

The only reason to scan at higher resolutions is if you are doing editing of the photos in Photoshop or other programs. For slides or negatives, you should scan at the highest level your scanner will give you, and save the scan in un-compressed TIFF format. TIFF format saves the information required for editing. For high numbers of negs or slides, you should get a stand alone unit. There is a very good scanner for these you can get on ebay for about $800, which will scan at about 4000 dpi (or higher, I do not remember the exact dpi). For negs and slides this is great. However, for photos there is a theoretical max size of about 300 - 600 dpi since the resolution of the photo is about that dpi. The grain in the real photos (not laser or inkjet) is between 300 - 600 dpi. The reason photos look better at this resolution than inkjet photos is each grain represents the actual color instead of several dots making an average color, which is what inkjets do.

[rallynavvie]

The reason photos look better at this resolution than inkjet photos is each grain represents the actual color instead of several dots making an average color, which is what inkjets do.

Tis also what laser printers do

[stiltman]

I save my scans at higher res (1200), so If I want to do some editing and enlarging later.